1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to a photographing apparatus, medium, and method, and more particularly, to a photographing apparatus, medium, and method detecting a still image and/or moving image of a to-be-photographed person based on face detection and examining the quality of the detected image, thereby providing a high-quality still and/or moving image of the to-be-photographed person.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, along with the advancement of semiconductor and image processing technologies, portable digital cameras, camcorders, cellular phone cameras, and the like, that include built-in mobile communication devices with digital camera capabilities, which will be called ‘portable photographing apparatuses’ hereinafter, have emerged and gained popularity. The portable photographing apparatuses are capable of photographing not only still images but also moving images of a to-be-photographed person. In particular, the portable photographing apparatus has widely been used in photographing the to-be-photographed person.
Despite widespread use, it has been found that the portable photographing apparatuses have several problems. When a still image of a person is to be generated, it is quite difficult to determine the proper location of the to-be-photographed person. For instance, a photographer may want to photograph the face of a person who is continuously moving. In such a condition, it is not easy to spontaneously take a picture by accurately pressing the shutter at the moment when the face of the person is accurately positioned at a proper location.
In this connection, Korean Patent Published Application No. 2004-0017998 has discussed the increasing of accuracy of a captured image by outputting a guide message for directing an orientation of the person to be photographed to be positioned at the center of an image sensor for an accurate face image, i.e., by providing the to-be-photographed person with time for correcting the position of his/her face. In addition, U.S. Pat. No. 6,636,694 has discussed the providing of a guide as to proper orientation of a to-be-photographed person for positioning of the pupils of a to-be-photographed person when photographing a photo for an identification card or a passport.
However, here, these discussions relate to of the directed orientation of the face of a to-be-photographed person at a predetermined position using a fixed camera, and is not suitable for applications of portable photographing apparatuses, e.g., for attaining a high quality face image.
In addition, even when a portable photographing apparatus is used in photographing a moving image, the available photographing time may usually be shortened due to the limited memory capacity of the portable photographing apparatus. For instance, unnecessary background images may be stored even though only a moving image of a to-be-photographed person is desired, resulting in the wasting of memory space.
Here, Japanese Patent Published Application No. 2002-176619 discusses the clipping and transmitting of only frames, among pre-recorded moving image frames, where a to-be-photographed person faces the front of a portable communication terminal, with frames having sound exceeding a predetermined level being determined as corresponding to the face oriented frames. According to this discussion, however, since image sequences of a face are clipped from previously photographed moving images, using the portable communication terminal, it is quite difficult to store moving images of the user using a portable photographing apparatus on a real-time basis.
Meanwhile, to photograph a to-be-photographed person, using the portable photographing apparatus, the to-be-photographed person should be positioned at the center of a focusing area. In conventional photographing apparatuses having distance-based auto-focusing capabilities, focus is adjusted in the center of the image without regard to the position of the to-be-photographed person. That is to say, no direct solution for auto-focusing has yet been proposed.
Thus, it has been found that in order to take a still image of a person to be photographed, using a portable photographing apparatus, it is desirable to automatically identify the position of the face of the to-be-photographed person to notify a user of the portable photographing apparatus of an appropriate photographing state. In addition, in the case where the user intends to take a moving image of the to-be-photographed person, moving images of the to-be-photographed person should be stored only when a face of the of the to-be-photographed person is detected, thereby extending the available time for which all moving images can be stored, i.e., additional moving image data can be stored.